When it comes to recreating the cutthroat lifestyle of piracy and plunder, there really is no game that does it better than Rare’s open-world online game Sea of Thieves. Developer Rare has stuck to its core vision of creating a game that’s driven more by player interaction rather than scripted sequences, and in a recent interview with Polygon the studio said it wants to continue building on that centralized focus of social interaction between players.
Because of how open and freeform it is, Sea of Thieves allows for some truly emergent gameplay that’s entirely driven by the whims of its playerbase. When the game first launched, critics bemoaned the noticeable lack of structured content that players could take advantage of, something which made Sea of Thieves especially unappealing to solo players. However, now that Rare has fleshed out the world a bit (most noticeably in the recent Hungering Deep expansion pack), players are starting to see that the overt focus on player-driven narratives isn’t a weakness after all, especially now that players have more incentives to team up and cooperate rather than simply murder each other on site.
Speaking with Polygon, Rare senior designer Shelley Preston acknowledged Sea of Thieves’ unique position in the gaming industry and how the studio wants to keep building on that position:
“It’s really about building that bond between players. I don’t think there’s any game experience out there like it. That’s what’s unique and special about Sea of Thieves, and that’s what we’re continuing to build on.”
Sea of Thieves executive producer Joe Neate echoed Preston’s sentiments, saying that Rare doesn’t want to make a game where players have to grind up to a proverbial endgame only to find themselves locked out of arbitrarily difficult experiences like raids. While there are structured systems that Sea of Thieves players can “grind” through if they wish, Sea of Thieves is very much about the journey rather than the destination, and it’s the players who ultimately decide what shape that journey takes:
“Most games are about ‘me,’ but for Sea of Thieves, we’ve always tried to be about that bond. What we think is the magic of Sea of Thieves is just the journey.”
Lately, that emphasis on player interaction and, more specifically, cooperation, has taken the form of a new in-game event that focuses on underwater exploration. Rare also says that it’s not totally unthinkable to imagine that Sea of Thieves players might one day partake in a battle royale experience of their very own, though such an experience would likely not be added for many months yet, if at all.